The Dual Power

Published:PravdaNo. 28, April 9, 1917.

      Signed:N. Lenin.

      Published according to the text inPravda.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1964,

      Moscow,Volume 24,

      pages38-41.Translated:Isaacs BernardTranscription\Markup:B. BagginsandD. WaltersPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      1999

      (2005).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.

The basic question of every revolution is that of state
power. Unless this question is understood, there can be no
intelligent participation in the revolution, not to speak of
guidance of the revolution.

The highly remarkable feature of our revolution is that it has
brought about adual power.This fact must be grasped
first and foremost: unless it is understood, we cannot
advance. We must know how to supplement and amend old
“formulas”, for example, those of Bolshevism, for while they
have been found to be correct on the whole, their concrete
realisationhas turned out to
bedifferent.Nobodypreviously thought, or could
have thought, of a dual power.

What is this dual power? Alongside the Provisional Government,
the government ofbourgeoisie, another governmenthas
arisen, so far weak and incipient, but undoubtedly a government
that actually exists and is growing—the Soviets of Workers’
and Soldiers’ Deputies.

What is the class composition of this other government? It
consists of the proletariat and the peasants (in soldiers’
uniforms). What is the political nature of this government? It
is a revolutionary dictatorship, i.e., a power directly based on
revolutionary seizure, on the direct initiative of the people
from below, andnot on a lawenacted by a centralised
state power. It is an entirely different kind of power from the
one that generally exists in the parliamentary
bourgeois-democratic republics of the usual type still
prevailing in the advanced countries of Europe and America. This
circumstance often over looked, often not given enough thought,
yet it is the crux of the matter.Thispower is ofthe same typeas theParis
Commune of 1871. The fundamentalcharacteristics of this
type are:(1) the source of power is not a law previously discussed and
enacted by parliament, but the direct initiative of the
people from below, in their local areas—direct “seizure”,
to use a current expression;(2) the replacement of the police and the army, which are
institutions divorced from the people and set against the
people, by the direct arming of the whole people; order in
the state under such a power is maintained by the armed
workers and peasantsthemselves,by the armed
peoplethemselves;(3) officialdom, the bureaucracy, are either similarly replaced
by the direct rule of the people themselves or at least
placed under special control; they not only become elected
officials, but are alsosubject to recallat the
people’s first demand; they are reduced to the position of
simple agents; from a privileged group
holding “jobs” remunerated on a high, bourgeois
scale, they become workers of a special “arm of the
service”, whose remunerationdoes not exceedthe
ordinary pay of a competent worker.

This, and thisalone, constitutes theessenceof the Paris Commune as a special type of state. This essence
has been forgotten or perverted by the Plekhanovs (downright
chauvinists who have betrayed Marxism), the Kautskys (the men of
the “Centre”, i.e., those who vacillate between chauvinism and
Marxism), and generally by all those Social-Democrats,
Socialist-Revolutionaries, etc., etc., who now rule the roost.

They are trying to get away with empty phrases, evasions,
subterfuges; they congratulate each other a thousand times upon
the revolution, but refuse toconsider whatthe Soviets
of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputiesare. They refuse to
recognise the obvious truth that in as much as these Soviets
exist,in as much asthey are a power, we have in
Russia a state of thetypeof the Paris Commune.

I have emphasised the words “in as much as”, for it is only an
incipient power. By direct agreement with the bourgeois
Provisional Government and by a series of actual concessions, it
has itselfsurrendered and is surrenderingits positions
to the bourgeoisie.

Why? Is it because Chkheidze, Tsereteli, Steklov and Co. are
making a “mistake”? Nonsense. Only a philistine can think so—not a
Marxist. The reason isinsufficient
class-consciousnessand organisation of the proletarians
and peasants. The “mistake” of the leaders I have named lies in
their petty-bourgeois position, in the fact that instead of
clarifying the minds of the workers, they arebefoggingthem; instead of dispelling petty-bourgeois illusions,they areinstillingthem; instead of freeing the people from
bourgeois influence, they arestrengtheningthat
influence.

It should be clear from this why our comrades, too, make so many
mistakes when putting the question “simply”: Should the
Provisional Government be overthrown immediately?

My answer is:(1) it should be overthrown, for it is an oligarchic, bourgeois,
and not a people’s government, andis unableto
provide peace, bread, or full freedom;(2) It cannot be overthrown just now, for it is being kept in
power by a direct and indirect, a formal and actualagreementwith the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, and
primarily with the chief Soviet, the Petrograd Soviet;

 (3) generally, it can not be “overthrown” in the ordinary way,
for it rests on the “support” given to the
bourgeoisie by thesecondgovernment—the Soviet
of Workers’ Deputies, and that government is the only
possible revolutionary government, which directly expresses
the mind and will of the majority of the workers and
peasants. Humanity has not yet evolved and we do not as yet
know a type of government superior to and better than the
Soviets of Workers’, Agricultural Labourers’, Peasants’, and
Soldiers’ Deputies.

To become a power the class-conscious workers must win the
majority to their side.As long as noviolence is used
against the people there is no other road to power. We are not
Blancists, we do not stand for the seizure of power by a
minority. We are Marxists, we stand for proletarian class
struggle against petty-bourgeois intoxication, against
chauvinism-defencism, phrase-mongering and dependence on the
bourgeoisie.

Let us create a proletarian Communist Party; its elements have
already been created by the best adherents of Bolshevism; let us
rally our ranks for proletarian class work; and larger and
larger numbers from among the proletarians, from among thepoorestpeasants will range themselves on our side. Foractual experiencewill from day to day shatter the
petty-bourgeois illusions of those “Social-Democrats”,the
Chkheidzes, Tseretelis, Steklovs and others, the “Socialist
Revolutionaries”, the petty bourgeois of an even purer water,
and so on and so forth.

The bourgeoisie stands for the undivided power of the
bourgeoisie.

The class-conscious workers stand for the undivided power of the
Soviets of Workers’, Agricultural Labourers’, Peasants’, and
Soldiers’ Deputies—for undivided power made possible not by
adventurist acts, but byclarifyingproletarian minds,
byemancipatingthem from the influence of the
bourgeoisie.

The petty bourgeoisie—“Social-Democrats”, Socialist-Revolutionaries,
etc., etc.—vacillate and, thereby,hinderthis clarification and emancipation.

This is the actual, theclassalignment of forces that
determines our tasks.